Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on January 21, 2011 by CyberNet.

I’ve always added some of my most used folders to the Mac OS X Dock, but at the same time my menu bar has remained fairly empty. I came across a pretty nice app called XMenu that will let you add up to 6 different icons to the menu bar, and each one represents a different folder on your machine.

As you can see in the screenshot above there are some nice settings you can configure, but the focus is basically on selecting the directories you want to include. Unfortunately you can’t create an unlimited number of icons pointing to whatever directories you want, but the pre-defined directories should be sufficient for a lot of your needs. For myself having the Applications, Home, and Documents folders will cover most of the files I need to access on any given day.

There are also some tricks based on whether you’re holding down a “modifier” key when selecting an item. Here’s a list of what the various keys do:

• None – Open file or launch application
• Control – Show item (open parent folder in Finder and select file)
• Shift – Show original (open parent folder of original in Finder). If the select item is not an alias, this reveals the item.
• Option – Show original and hide current application
• Command – Show info in Finder

It took me a minute to realize what the field was for next to each of the folders listed in the preferences. It’s actually for those of you who choose to display text in the menu bar rather than the icon, and those names will be what shows up.

XMenu Homepage (Mac only; Freeware)
Note: A readme file is included with the download that explains some of the features

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on April 15, 2008 by CyberNet.

Time Saving Tuesday

A few weeks ago we demonstrated an extremely simple backup solution called IdleBackup. It was nothing too fancy, and this time around we wanted to go to the other extreme with a freeware Windows backup application that will really knock your socks off. The program is called Cobian Backup, and I wouldn’t have found it without Leland’s help.

Cobian Backup is one of the most full-featured backup utilities that I’ve seen, and the best thing about it is that it’s completely free. I’ve been a proud owner of SyncBackSE for quite some time now, but Cobian Backup includes almost all of the same features in it’s latest version 9 Beta release. The interface is well designed, creating and scheduling backups is simple, and it is busting at the seams with customization!

(Click to Enlarge)

–Features–

Now I could have just listed off the features that the developer had put together, but I actually think the developer is rather modest of what the program is truly capable of. So I put together my own set of features highlighting all of the things that I find to be the most useful in Cobian:

• Can be installed as a service, which means it is able to run even when a user isn’t logged into the computer
• 3 different types of backups are available:
• Full backups: Every single file in the source will be copied or compressed. If you are overwriting, every file will be replaced. If Overwrite is unchecked, you will have several copies of the same source.
• Incremental:  The program will check if the source has been changed from the last backup. If there is no need to copy the file, it will be skipped, saving backup time. The incremental procedure checks the Archive bit attribute of the file. You may want to manually reset the attribute to force a full backup: use the “Set the archive attributes” on the Task menu.
• Differential: The program will check if the source has been changed from the last FULL backup. If there is no need to copy the file, it will be skipped, saving backup time. The differential procedure checks the Archive bit attribute of the file. You may want to manually reset the attribute to force a full backup: use the “Set the archive attributes” on the Task menu.
• Dummy task: This backup doesn’t need a source or a destination. It is useful to use the task just as an scheduler to execute applications, close services, reboot the computer, etc.
• Remotely connect to and manage your backups (Cobian will need to be installed on both the host and client machine to do this). Go to Tools -> Remote Client in Cobian to access this feature.
• Backup to or from a network or FTP location
• Compress your backups using 7-Zip or regular ZIP
• Split the compressed files up into multiple files according to a maximum size that you specify
• You can have multiple source and/or destinations
• You can have a timestamp added to backup filenames so that existing backups are not overwritten
• Perform a variety of actions before and/or after a backup starts:
• Pause for a specified duration
• Start or close a program
• Start or stop a service
• Restart or shutdown the computer
• If you choose to perform an incremental or differential backup you can set Cobian to automatically do a full backup every X backups, where “X” is any number you want.
• It will retrieve files from the Volume Shadow Copy (on XP and Vista) if a file is locked by another application
• You can provide a list of files and/or folders to exclude
• UNICODE support

–Creating a Backup–

When making a decision on which backup application to use it is pretty critical to see first-hand whether it is going to do what you want it to. And that’s what this screenshot gallery is for!

In Cobian there are seven different areas that you can configure for each backup task that you create. Below you’ll find a screenshot of each different area so that you can appropriately decide whether Cobian will be able to perform the backups in the way that you want it to.

(Click to Enlarge)

–Overview–

Cobian Backup is a tremendous application that will likely have much, if not all of what you’re looking for. It might take some time to get the backups setup just the way you want, but once you’re done the end result could save you days of frustration. Believe me, in the last two years I’ve had two different hard drives fail on me. If it wasn’t for the regular backups that I performed there could have been a lot of unrecoverable settings, pictures, and documents. Software like Cobian Backup can really come through in a pinch!

Cobian Backup Homepage
Note: In this review I was using Cobian Backup 9 Beta.

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on July 22, 2008 by CyberNet.

Time Saving Tuesday

Flickr is a photo sharing service that has around for over four years, and in that time it has grown at an astounding pace. Thousands of images are uploaded to Flickr every minute, and it was just last year that they had over two billion photos uploaded to their site. The good news is that with the increase in popularity also comes an increase in the number of free tools available.

Personally I’ve been a Flickr Pro subscriber for a little over a year now, and the amount of features you get for the $2 per month is well worth the money. I currently have over 6,000 images uploaded on my account that I share with friends and family, and I’m always looking for tools that make the job even easier. So what I’ve got for you today are my favorite free applications that help me upload photos to my Flickr account.

–iPhoto Plugin (Homepage)–

Flickr makes an application for Mac OS X that is easy to use, but the problem is that it doesn’t integrate into Apple’s flagship photo management application called iPhoto. This is a big deal because many Mac users will probably be using iPhoto, and using the standard Flickr uploader means that you’ll need to add tags, descriptions, and titles to all of your photos twice: once in iPhoto and again on Flickr. Yuck!

No problem. The Free Flickr eXporter iPhoto plugin works inside of iPhoto, and preserves all of your descriptions, tags/keywords, and titles while uploading your images. You can also adjust privacy settings, resize images before uploading them, and choose which set(s) you’d like the images placed in.

–Windows Live Photo Gallery (Homepage)–

Windows Live Photo Gallery is one of the best ways to not only manage your photos, but also to upload images to the Yahoo-owned Flickr. What’s interesting is that Microsoft ships Windows Live Photo Gallery with Flickr support, and that means there’s even less you have to do to get it running.

To upload images to Flickr all you have to do is go to Publish -> More Services -> Publish on Flickr to have the wizard walk you through the steps needed. After authorizing the application you’ll be able to choose which set your photos should be uploaded to, select a maximum image size, and also change the permissions. The application will automatically grab any tags and descriptions you’ve added to the photos and include those with what gets uploaded.

One of the things that is rather unique with Windows Live Photo Gallery’s implementation is that you can queue multiple uploads. After you get one set of photos uploading just switch back to Photo Gallery to start uploading more. The program prevents multiple uploads from going on simultaneously, and will add any other batches to a queue. Most Flickr uploading apps will just block you from trying to upload more than one batch at a time, which can be a pain if you just want to walk away from your computer while the uploading is going on.

Here is a step-by-step walkthrough of the Flickr support in Windows LIve Photo Gallery.

–Picasa Plugin (Homepage)–

Google’s Picasa application is an excellent way to manage your photos, and all hope isn’t lost if you don’t want to use it with Google’s online photo services. There’s a handy plugin called Picasa2Flickr that adds a “Send To Flickr” button to the Picasa toolbar near the bottom of the window. When you click on the button it will add the selected photos to Flickr Uploadr 3.0 where you can then finish the upload process.

It’s a bummer that in order for this to work you need to have both Picasa and the Flickr Uploadr installed, but it is more convenient this way. The button keeps you from having to find your photos on your computer, and then drag them into the Flickr Uploadr.

–Send To Flickr (Homepage)–

I’m thinking this has to be one of the fastest and easiest ways to get your photos on Flickr. After you get it installed you’ll be able to select any photos from Windows Explorer, right-click on them, and in the “Send To” menu you’ll see a Flickr option (pictured to the right). The images will immediately start uploading themselves to your account, and you’ll see a preview window that includes the status of your upload.

There aren’t any of the advanced options that you might be used to, but if you’re not concerned with how your photos are organized this is probably one of the best Flickr solutions.

–Overview–

I’ve only begun to scratch the surface with the tools that you can use to upload photos to Flickr, but I only wanted to cover the ones that I’ve used. Let us know in the comments how you get your photos on Flickr!

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on October 02, 2006 by CyberNet.

When I was over at Lifehacker I found this pretty cool program that someone developed called Jedi Concentrate. The point of the software is to dim all of the windows behind the one that your working on. That way it will help you focus on only that window.

That software comes from the App A Day website which is constantly launching new open source software. Someone had taken his Jedi Concentrate and threw a few options on it such as opacity and color of the dim. That version is much better in my opinion.

However, I got to reading through the comments and there were a few recommendations for making the software better. The first thing that half of the commenters pointed out was that it doesn’t work on a multi-monitor display. The second thing is that the dimming effect is removed as soon as you switch windows…and you have to press F12 each time you want to reapply the effect.

Then someone in the comments referred to Ghoster which is a similar freeware program that, just like Jedi Concentrate, does not need to be installed. However, I find it to be much better because when you switch windows it will constantly dim anything in the background. One option that I changed right away with this is the “showontop” option otherwise the taskbar is always dimmed as well. I have been using it for a little while now but there appears to be some bugs in it.

So those are three pretty good solutions to helping you focus on the window that you’re working on. I don’t think that I will continue to use this software because if I need to focus on a window I will probably just maximize it. 😉

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on December 17, 2005 by CyberNet.